Sunday, December 30, 2007

Adding Insult to Injury

Last week I wrote about the rising costs of living in Israel, how difficult it is for certain (including working) sectors to make ends meet, with the government removing all the subsidies it can, and with all the prices on our monopolistic services rising. But most importantly I wrote how you can help.

It turns out that besides the rising cost of electricity, gas, and bread, the price on yet another basic commodity will be going up.

Water.

That's right. The price for water, the most basic of necessities will be raised by 10%.

Now, I know I usually say the government is heartless and cruel.

They don’t care about how these rising costs of living affect those living on fixed incomes.

But that’s not true.

In response, the government decided this week to raise the salaries of various sectors to account for the increase in their cost of living due to the removal of bread subsidies, the rising cost of electricity, gas, and water.

The following is a partial list of salary hikes go into effect this week:

6 comments:

I probably should add, the people above don't have to pay for gas for their car (nor their car to for that matter), they don't pay for their phone bills, they don't have to pay for "expenses" related to their job - which includes for some regular hotel stays in Jerusalem.

I also somehow doubt they pay for their meals in the cafeteria too, but if they do pay, they are definitely subsidized meals.

Well, one thing the members of our government can always agree on and that always crosses political divides is a pay raise. Just last year Mks received a 2.5 percent pay increase. Should be expected when there is zero accountability or real representation in our government. sigh.

Amendment XXVII (the Twenty-seventh Amendment) is the most recent amendment to be incorporated into the United States Constitution, having been ratified in 1992, more than 202 years after its initial submission in 1789.

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Of course, even this mild limitation, easily circumvented by "cost of living adjustments" (COLAs) rather than pay raises took over 200 years to ratify!

In Israel it just gets snuck into something like the annual Arrangements Law (Chok Hesdarim).

I just heard on the news last night that the Prime Minister's office is reneging on Olmert's promise last month to immediately secure additional funding of pension benefits for Holocaust survivors and no money is immediately forthcoming. This is despite the huge number of requests being put forward for money to ontain such luxuries as eyeglasses, medicines, dentures, hearing aids, etc.

well .. the government should probably double and triple the price of water to force people and businesses to use less of it ... it should also start phasing out some sections of agriculture as the current patterns of water use are unsustainable .... water is becoming scarce in the region ... we all know this